2.14.2010

When people talk about politics they prioritize. Humans have to prioritize because we are finite creatures who live in time and are not omnipotent. Priorities have an important role in political discussions, because politics is about what we ought to do and what we can reasonably do. Prioritizing moral issues does not necessarily entail the neglect of the other moral issues which are less important, as some suggest.

There are three things that play a role in our judgment of political priorities. These are, in no particular order, (1) the nature of the moral evil, (2) the quantity of the moral evil, (3) and the practicality of the stopping the moral evil. We must know what's wrong, the extent of what's wrong, and what we can reasonably do to stop it. If our political judgments lack these three features they will be obtuse and unpersuasive.

Pretentious Precepts

"First Things means, first, that the first thing to be said about public life is that public life is not the first thing. First Things means, second, that there are first things, in the sense of first principles, for the right ordering of public life."

“A free society cannot survive if we are so free that nothing is expected of us.”